Hi Tom, I have a problem trying to copy data from one instance to another instance using db link. i have a set of kornsheel scripts. table names are put into a file. my kornshell script will read the file and spawn four processeses at a time. so that means that 4 processes in parallel will copy data and table name is read from the file.

i am passing two parameters to my shell script. pdate and loc_id. as mentioned above, the table names are store in a file. not all tables have pdate and loc_id as a column. some tables in the list have both columns, some have only one column(pdate) and some don't have either ptime or loc_id. i am using insert /*+append*/ to insert into data into the table.

since not all the tables have both columns (pdate and loc_id) i cannot say something like
insert /*+append*/ into table_name
select * from table_name where bdate = p_date and b_loc_id = loc_id

how can i write an insert statement that takes care of all my scenarios described above?

for example, for tables with both columns i would like to do this
insert /*+append*/ into table_name
select * from table_name where bdate = p_date and b_loc_id = loc_id

for tables with pdate, i would like to do this
insert /*+append*/ into table_name
select * from table_name where bdate = p_date

and for tables with none of those columns i would like this
insert /*+append*/ into table_name
select * from table_name

please help. if my approach is not correct, i will appreciate if you can share your ideas. many thanks